her shoulders, Annie kept walking, realizing how this decrepit neighborhood was a reflection of her life. Lonely, scarred and struggling to survive.
She’d had the typical fairy-tale dreams for herself as a girl—love and marriage, happily ever after. Instead she’d found a nightmare—fear and abuse, divorce from a man now serving time for a laundry list of crimes. After six years of unhappiness, at least she was free of Walt. Her job as a waitress at Pop’s Diner barely covered her bills, but her children were safe now. She was safe. That was all that truly mattered.
Yet as she searched for some evidence of where to take the package, she felt anything but safe. A prick of alarm nipped her neck. Though she heard nothing, saw no one, the uneasy sense that someone was following her crawled over her like a cockroach on her skin. She shuddered.
Annie drew a deep breath for courage, her nose filling with the stench of sewage, mildew and despair.
A scuffing noise filtered through the night from an alley just ahead of her. Her steps faltered. Her pulse jumped.
“H-hello?” she called, her voice cracking.
A hulking figure emerged from the black void. The man descended on her before a scream could form in her throat. He wrapped arms of steel around her, and a fleshy palm covered her nose and mouth. Lifting her as if she weighed nothing, her attacker pulled her into the dark alley and slammed her against a brick wall.
The collision knocked the air from her lungs. Shock and fear froze her limbs.
No! her brain screamed. Not again! Slow-motion images of her past flickered before her mind’s eye.
“You call this slop dinner?” Walt’s hand cracked against her chin in an upward arc.
Her assailant seized the manila envelope she’d sworn on her life she’d deliver only to Joseph Nance.
Panic surged inside her. Her fingers curled into the package, clinging to it for all she was worth. “No!”
“Give me the money, bitch!” he growled. His fist crashed into her mouth, and a metallic taste slid over her tongue.
Red smears stained the floor. Blood. Her blood.
Walt kicked her in the ribs, and crimson drops leaked from her nose and splashed onto the linoleum.
The man’s beefy fingers bit her flesh. He shook her. “Give it to me, or I’ll kill you!”
Past and present twined around each other. Numbed her. She did what experience had taught her was her best defense. She shut down. Drew into herself. Closed her eyes.
Just endure it. Survive.
Her grip slackened, and the package was ripped from her arms.
Chapter Two
With a frightened cry, Annie slid to the ground, raised her arms to protect her head. Through the haze of her terror, she heard the shuffle of feet. A grunt. A curse.
Opening her eyes a slit, she found a second man in the alley, brawling hand-to-hand with her attacker.
Touching her swollen lip, she scooted farther away from the men who battled in the shadowed alley. She cringed as the newly arrived man landed a solid blow to her attacker’s gut. Her assailant responded with a resounding punch to the other man’s jaw.
Annie curled into a ball, trembling as fists flew. She squeezed her eyes shut and plugged her ears. She’d seen and heard enough violence in recent months to last her a lifetime. Her ex-husband’s abuse was an all-too-present memory that haunted her every day.
Hot tears leaked onto her cheeks, and she conjured a image of her children, Haley and Ben. She prayed she’d survive to see them again. Please, God.
Her kids were all that mattered. The reason she worked the exhausting waitress job at the diner. Her reason to persevere. Her reason for leaving Walt sixteen months ago, despite the horrifying weeks that followed as her abusive ex hunted her, terrorized her, nearly killed her.
A loud, pained shout jolted her out of her protective shell, and she peeked out at the scene unfolding before her. Her assailant was on the ground, the second man rubbing his knuckles. As he stepped back from his opponent, the second man moved through a shaft of light from a streetlamp.
And Annie glimpsed a face she knew from the diner. A regular.
Her gasp drew the man’s attention.
She searched her memory for his name. John? Jacob? No—Jonah.
“Annie, are you all right?”
In those few seconds of Jonah’s distraction, her assailant snatched up the envelope and ran from the alley.
“The package!” Panic wrenched Annie’s chest.
Jonah pursued the thief to the end of the alley but apparently decided against a footrace. Instead, he walked back toward Annie, wiping blood from his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. “Are you hurt?”
“He took the envelope,” she said, her voice quivering. A sinking disappointment crushed her chest. Though grateful to be alive and to have had Jonah’s help, she dreaded what Hardin would do when he discovered she’d lost his package. Peter Hardin was no gentleman, and she doubted he’d be forgiving about her screwup. She buried her face in her hands as fresh tears puddled in her eyes. “He’s going to fire me. I know he is. Oh, God…”
Jonah crouched in front of her, and she jolted when he stroked a hand down her arm.
Raising a wary gaze, she scrunched a few inches farther away from him. He may have scared the mugger off, but she’d seen his skill with his fists. Experience had taught her to give violent men a wide berth.
“Hey, come on now.” The low, soothing rumble of his voice lulled her. “You won’t lose your job. It’s not your fault you were mugged.” His dark eyebrows drew into a frown, and his tone hardened. “If anyone is to blame it’s that bastard Hardin for sending a woman into this neighborhood alone in the middle of the night.”
Jonah flexed and balled his hand. Annie’s mouth dried, the stolen envelope temporarily forgotten as she focused on the more immediate threat—the man fisting his hand before her.
Taking a deep breath, she eyed Jonah’s clenched fist. “Wh-why are you here?”
He cocked his head slightly and lifted a corner of his mouth. “I’d have thought that was obvious. I followed you when you left the diner.”
So her sense had been right. Her pulse sped up. “Why? What do you want?”
He raised his hands, palms out. “I only wanted to keep an eye on you. I figured something like this might happen and…” He sighed. “I’m only sorry it took me so long to catch up once the jerk grabbed you. I should have stayed closer, but I didn’t want to spook you if you saw me following you.”
Annie furrowed her brow skeptically. “So you were following me to…protect me?”
